well, the 209.85.171.102 loads google okay
but "groups" from there times out also.
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found something for groups.google.com in /etc/hosts,
removed it. Maybe tomorrow it will be fixed here or
is something in a DNS server configuration somewhere
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s/tomorrow/NOW/g ^^^ that was it. the
entry in /etc/hosts was probably stale and no longer
valid.. works fine
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